10 useful science and engineering search engines

Use these tools to hunt up standards, circuit diagrams, chemical properties, and more.

I have a confession to make: When I first used the Internet, I considered it a waste of time. I know, I know, shortsighted. My husband loves to harass me about it, especially given the fact that I now spend upwards of 10 hours a day on the Internet researching stories, monitoring the industry, and generally gathering information, not to mention the fact that this is where most of my work sees the light of day.

The root of my early problems with the Internet was ineffective search engines. I used a very early version of Lycos, back when it was only a search engine. It had an annoying tendency to time out, as well as limited offerings when it came to search strings. As a result, when I performed a search on the single computer in our department that had web access, either my search ended prematurely or I wound up with 150,000 largely irrelevant results. Hence, my comment that beyond email, the Internet was a waste of time, the statement I will never live down.

In honor of that, I’m presenting a list of science and technology-based search engines that do an effective job of ferreting out information. Although general search engines do a fine job, sometimes these purpose-built sites can save time when it comes to finding the information you need.Circuit ScoutNo point in reinventing the wheel—this site allows you to prowl through more than 32,000 circuit diagrams and schematics.

Datasheets.comThis page lets you choose among more than 250 million electronic parts.

Google ScholarAccess a wide array of scholarly literature, including journals, books, theses, and more from professional societies, universities, academic publishers, etc.

Patent Law LinksWorking on the next great invention? Before you can patent it, you have to declare disclose prior work in the area. This website has a wide array of search engines that will allow you to review existing patents as part of your due diligence.

Sweet SearchAlthough it’s ostensibly for students, the search engine not only returns results but augments each entry with excerpts from the page so that you can take a closer look at where you’re going to get without taking time to load the link.

TechStreetNeed to look up a standard? This site provides a comprehensive global listing that includes JEDEC, IEEE standards, IEC standards, and more.WWW Chemistry GuideA useful reference for chemical properties and data, curated by scientists and engineers.

These are some of the tools that I find useful. What about you? What are your must-have sites?

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned findchips.com. I use it all the time to find which distributors have parts, and if a part numer (or partial part number) pops up, the link takes you to the distributor page that generally has the datasheet.

I used to search for parts on Google, but that's where I found all of my spam. I don't recall the sites, but I always seemed to get links that pretended to have the info, but just linked to other sites that linked to other sites... Then I gave up on Google.
Over the weekend, I've been experimenting with DigiKey, Datasheets and Mouser - running parts from my BOMs through. I did find an electrolytic to not be on Datasheets and a few parts to not be on Mouser. I tend to select parts based on what I can buy at DK, so I would expect to find all of the parts there.
Another site that I find quite useful is: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html It's about grammar, not technology, but, though I value function over form, form does help with good communications. This site covers all of those little things like "affect vs. effect:" that I ignored while back in school.

Mouser is where I always go first for parts and datasheets. For live pricing and availability when I don't find it in Mouser, I use Octopart, a specialised parts search engine that gives you real time pricing from several vendors on the same component. The hard work of finding obsolete parts info I leave it to Bing.

Thanks for publishing this list Kristin. I've used several of these sites, but there are others I had never heard of. Like you, I also have had good results with Google scholar to weed out everything that is *not* the journal article or academic publication I'm looking for.